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The Nephites are a people of the Book of Mormon, the scripture Joseph Smith published in 1830. The Keys of Enoch gives them a second history, as Atlantean survivors. Their name is close to the Nephilim of Genesis, but the two have nothing in common.
Origin and publication
Joseph Smith said the angel Moroni led him to a buried stone box on a hill near his home in Manchester, New York, in 1823. He recovered the golden plates there on September 22, 1827. He said he translated the Book of Mormon from them and published it in 1830.
The book is a religious record of ancient peoples in the Americas, mainly the Nephites and the Lamanites. It teaches about Jesus Christ and includes prophecies about him. Its followers see it as another testament of Jesus Christ, next to the Bible.
A second set of ancient texts reached Smith a few years later. Between 1818 and 1822 Antonio Lebolo found eleven mummies and several Ptolemaic-era papyri near Thebes in Egypt. Michael Chandler came to own them and showed them in Kirtland, Ohio, in the summer of 1835. Kirtland was then the home of the Latter Day Saints, and church members bought the papyri on July 3, 1835. Smith presented them as the source of the Book of Abraham, not the Book of Mormon.
The Nephites as Atlanteans
In The Keys of Enoch (page 431), the Nephites are the Altean descendants, or Atlanteans, who survived on the planet. They spread the spiritual legacy of the Altea Region. They migrated into Central and North America and carried their influence into South America and Egypt. This is a channeled claim, not a historical record.
Nephites and Lamanites in the Book of Mormon
The book is said to be written by ancient prophets. The best known is Mormon, who gives the book its name. It is divided into smaller books named after their main narrator or hero, such as Nephi, Alma and Mosiah.
The Nephites descend from Nephi, a son of the prophet Lehi. In the narrative Lehi led his family from Jerusalem to the Americas around 600 BC. The Nephites build cities, farm and follow the prophets, including their prophecies of Jesus Christ. Nephi leads them first, and then a line of judges and kings.
The Lamanites descend from Laman, Nephi’s elder brother, who rebelled against him. That split begins the long feud between the two peoples. The early Lamanites are pictured as nomadic, warlike, wicked and heathen.
The story moves through cycles of righteousness and wickedness, prosperity and decline. Some Lamanites convert and at times become more righteous than the Nephites. The Anti-Nephi-Lehies, Lamanite converts of around 90 BC, made a covenant never to go to war and buried their weapons. In the end the Nephites fall through corruption, war and the rejection of their prophets.
For Latter-day Saints the story is about righteousness, sin and redemption. It also ties into the gathering of Israel and the role of the Americas at the end of days.
Faith and evidence
Believers hold that the book is history. Most historians and archaeologists outside the church do not. They point to the lack of archaeological evidence and to anachronisms in the language. For the church the account is a matter of faith.
The Book of Mormon is one of the founding texts of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other Latter Day Saint churches. It is used as scripture in teaching and worship, and it has been translated into many languages for millions of members. It also inspired the satirical Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, about the church’s missionaries.
Nephites versus Nephilim
The Nephilim (/ˈnɛfɪˌlɪm/; Hebrew: נְפִילִים Nəfīlīm) are mysterious beings or people in the Hebrew Bible who are described as being large and strong. The Hebrew word Nephilim is sometimes translated as “giants”, and sometimes taken to mean “the fallen ones”. Their origins are disputed. Some view them as offspring of fallen angels and humans. Others view them as offspring of the descendants of Seth and Cain.
There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
Genesis 6:4, King James Version
Genesis places the giants before the Flood, as children of the sons of God and the daughters of men.
They appear again in Numbers 13:33, where the spies see “the giants, the sons of Anak”. Scholars read them as giants, as fallen angels or as powerful rulers. The Bible says little about them, so Jewish and Christian traditions read them in many ways.
The Nephites belong to a different story. They exist only in the Book of Mormon, a text of the 19th-century Latter Day Saint movement founded by Joseph Smith. The Nephilim come from ancient Jewish and Christian tradition and appear in the early chapters of Genesis. The Nephites, published in 1830, belong to a claimed history of ancient America. The Nephilim have been part of Jewish and Christian debate for centuries. The Nephites matter only within the Latter Day Saint movement.
